Ice Infrastructure & Maintenance

Nuna Deton’Cho Winter Road Services Joint Venture provided annual construction and maintenance of the 125-kilometre Gahcho Kué winter site access road, as well as full service operation of Margaret Lake camp. The site access road is located in the Northwest Territories and transverses a 101-kilometre lake ice and 24-kilometre portages with a take-off from the Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road to the Gahcho Kué mine site. The first construction season commenced December 2015, and the typical construction and maintenance schedule is as follows.

December: Initial road construction

Late January/early February: Allowable full loads

Mid to end of March: Road closure

Initial route construction involves clearing snow from the lake ice to an operational width of 40 metres and portage construction to a width of 10 metres. A typical season will see highway-legal full-load weights of 63.5 metric tonnes on an ice plate of 39 inches (3 feet) or greater. Aside from the usual remote northern construction challenges — lack of infrastructure, storms, and achieving cold temperatures to build ice — the route also has several archeologically sensitive areas alongside that must be protected and avoided.

Planning and development of the construction quarry which produced 750,000 m3 of blasted material; construction of the Phase 1 crusher pad to facilitate the setup of the aggregate crusher

Operation and maintenance of the aggregate crusher and production of approximately 140,000 m3 of crushed materials

Construction of a 12 km of permanent all-weather site access road network

Hauling and placement of 150,000 m3 of run-of-mine material and crushing aggregate to construct the camp and plant pad to accommodate the erection of a 450-person camp, process plant, shop, and other ancillary buildings